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Sunday, January 10, 2016

Simply Scrumptious Sopapilla Cheesecake Bites

I know I said there was only one cheesecake recipe for me. Only one deserving of the time and ingredients. Only one worth the calories.

For the most part...I stand by that.

Not that I'd turn my nose up at a pumpkin cheesecake...or a carrot cake cheesecake...or a blackberry swirled cheesecake...or pretty much any cheesecake to be honest.

Except chocolate. You can keep your chocolate cheesecake.

Don't judge.

Anyway, while I enjoy (pretty much) all cheesecakes, when it comes time to make one myself my go-to is The Ultimate Amaretto Cheesecake and it had been been a really long time since I'd made any other variety.

Then came New Years. AKA Our Gluttonous Night of Mexican Eating.

I needed a dessert. I thought of making flan, but I wasn't really feeling it.

Then I remembered seeing a recipe for sopapilla cheesecake.

Sopapillas come in several forms depending on where they're being made, but generally speaking they're a fry bread topped with honey and sugar.

Sounds pretty wonderful, right?

Right.

Anyway, the sopapilla cheesecake recipe forgoes the frying and uses crescent roll dough. A fairly basic cheesecake filling is sandwiched between two sheets of crescent dough. The top layer is coated with a mixture of cinnamon, sugar, and butter before baking and the entire thing is drizzled with honey when it comes out of the oven.

So good.

So very good.

And easy too!

The top gets crisped and lovely with that buttery cinnamon-sugar coating and the honey...oh the honey.

I could wax rhapsodic about the honey alone, to be honest. Any honey would work well with this dish, so don't think you have to go buy the expensive stuff- when it comes to honey none of it is all that cheap.

But I used the most amazing wildflower honey on this and it was simply divine. I keep walking over to the cabinet, pulling out that honey, and inhaling that lovely floral scent. It's that good.

:-) I will admit that my husband thought I'd lost my mind when I came into the living room bearing honey and insisted he smell it. Whatever. I'm in love with the stuff.

Anyway, so these are delicious. I found that my favorite way to serve them was to cut them into bites rather than bars, but you could certainly cut them into larger servings.

What a great way to finish off a Mexican feast- or any meal for that matter!

2. Beat the cream cheese with 1 cup of sugar and the vanilla extract in a bowl until smooth.

3. Unroll the cans of crescent roll dough, and use a rolling pin to shape each piece into 9x13 inch rectangles. Press one piece into the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish. Evenly spread the cream cheese mixture into the baking dish, then cover with the remaining piece of crescent dough. Stir together 3/4 cup of sugar, cinnamon, and butter. Dot the mixture over the top of the cheesecake.

4. Bake in the preheated oven until the crescent dough has puffed and turned golden brown, about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and drizzle with honey. Cool completely in the pan before cutting into 12 squares.